AS WE GET older, we tend to forget some details. Now it’s a political issue (Shutterstock).

“Say, Marilyn …. what day is this?”
Or ….

“I know you told me what time we have to leave, but …”
Or …

“Can you help me find my keys?”

The last one could have happened to me at almost any age, but becomes more frequent as the years go by. The others, well …

The age of presidential candidates is an issue very much in the news these days. President Joe Biden has been accused of not recalling (among others things) when his son Beau died and former president Donald Trump confused Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley.

Biden is 81 and Trump is 77 and neither are likely to be able to tell you the names of any of Taylor Swift’s greatest hits (nor can I, although I’m not quite as senior as they are).

Face it … all of us will struggle with memory a bit as we grow older. My theory is that our memory banks are finite and when we learn new stuff, we have to delete something else.

The way this is done is – in my opinion – that we retain things with emotional significance; facts or events the resonate with us.

For instance, Marilyn has at her fingertips the ages and dates of birth of all five grand-minors. Me, on the other hand, can recite the day-to-day starting lineup of the 1967 California Angels: Bob Rodgers catching, Don Mincher at first, Bobby Knoop at second, Jim Fregosi at shortstop ….

On another hand, I can speak credibly about the Bill of Rights, while Marilyn pays all the bills. Each of us knows some stuff.

Many societies esteem the wisdom of the aged; our society tends to scorn it. When I measure the significance of a leader who has a lapse of memory about an important fact, I ask “is it just a momentary blip, or is it because he (or she) never bothered to learn it in the first place?”

By the way, any of you happen to know the difference between the 55 freeway and the 57?